Croatia announces 400 MW renewables auction

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Croatia‘s Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, Tomislav Ćorić, announced this week that the Croatian electricity and gas regulator Hrvatski Operator Tržišta Energije will hold a second renewable energy auction this year.

He didn't provide a timeframe for its implementation but said that the procurement exercise will be aimed at contracting 400 MW of wind and solar power and that only projects with complete approval projects will be allowed to compete. “The auction will be designed to prevent that one or two big projects secure the entire allocated capacity,” he specified.

In the first renewable energy auction launched in August and finalized in December, the HROTE contracted only 25.5 MW of renewable energy capacity, although it had planned to assigned 88 MW. The allocated power went to 13.4 MW of solar projects, which secured a 12-year fixed tariff, and 7.7 MW of biomass plants, which were awarded a feed-in premium tariff.  The HROTE had received 108 bids with a combined capacity of 41.5 MW for the auction.

As for the solar technology, the selected 57 projects range in size from 50 to 500 kW. Their final average price was HRK 586.19 ($0.093)/kWh. The lowest bid was HRK 469.0 and the highest HRK 630.0.

The two exercises are part of a tender scheme for renewable energy and co-generation projects launched in May, with plans to allocate around 1,075 MW of PV capacity.

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Overall, the government aims to assign 2.26 GW of renewable energy capacity under the scheme, while also including other sources such as hydropower, wind, biomass, biogas, and geothermal energy. For solar, the government has decided to allocate 210 MW for projects ranging in size from 50 kW to 500 kW, 240 MW for installations with capacities between 500 kW and 10 MW, and 625 MW for PV power plants exceeding 10 MW.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, Croatia had 69 MW of installed PV capacity at the end of 2019. Croatia implemented a FIT scheme for rooftop solar which expired in 2015 after bringing around 50 MW of capacity online.

 

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